


Absolutely Not.

by doobiouss



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Blood and Violence, PARTIZAN Spoilers, Spoilers for PARTIZAN 28: Millennium Break: The Storm Over Cruciat, i just think clem and gur make interesting foils
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25778377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doobiouss/pseuds/doobiouss
Summary: They have to give it to her, Clementine Kesh can hold her own in a fight.[tw for breaking bones, stabbing, and implied drowning]
Relationships: Clementine Kesh & Gur Sevraq
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Absolutely Not.

_Absolutely not._

Gur is at the edge of Icebreaker before they even think about it, metallic legs moving in a fury of little clicks under their sodden robe. They couldn’t have. They didn’t- oh, _Clementine-_

And then lightning, crisp and absolute, illuminates everything in blinding brightness and impossible dark. And he sees a hand with perfect, sky blue nails dug into a gap in the fort’s metal paneling. 

They have to give it to her, Clementine Kesh can hold her own in a fight. 

She flies at them, her little knife clenched in a fist, baby blue eyes wide and insane with anger. He defends himself in ways he hasn’t had to in years, limbs striking at her in precise blows, cutting through her shoulder like the soft cheese she used to spread on crackers and eat while they played chess in a Kesh parlour room and he tried to lead her by the hand into a more just future. 

Clementine has always vexed them, slipping out of whatever plans he tries to craft to funnel her away from the rot of her lineage. It isn’t even from her own wit, just her own personality; somehow Clementine has perfected the art of being painfully easy to read while putting on an act at the same time. Under better circumstances, in a brighter future, they would almost commend her for it. 

The rain pours down hard, the placid voice of the intercoms advising personnel to come belowdecks providing a tuneless beat to a dance neither of them are following. Clementine's knife shatters one of his eyes, and she screams her little victory, animal and shrill. Another leg catchers her across the leg, and she doesn’t even care, merely lunges at him once again. Her pretty blonde hair is plastered down her face and neck, white dress staining with her blood and Gur’s own coolant. 

How has it come to this? Why are they still fighting? This was meant to be a conversation. A tedious, exhausting conversation without doubt, but one that would lead to a future for her. Gur gave her every opportunity, even when the world bayed for Clementine’s head on a stick, so why couldn’t they do it once more? 

They know the answer easily.

They are so, so tired of working on Clementine’s fickle, flickering dream of a nation that would love her like no one ever had. And in this moment? Clementine is the most unwavering that Gur Sevraq has ever seen her, and it is a terrible sight to behold. So if this is the truth of Clementine Kesh? If all of the ambition and hope and potential boil down to the animal in front of them, trying to end their life with a knife and her teeth? Then Gur can _finally_ take the easy option, the easy fight, and it is a joy.

When they collide again it takes them both off the edge of the fort. In the fall there is pain, and all the futures he will not be in, and all of the people who will not know where he went. He thinks about Future . He thinks about Valence. He thinks about the girl in front of him, who he thought he could save.

The water hits, and there is nothing more to think about.

* * *

_Absolutely not._

The metal thug did _not_ just push off the fort she captured herself. She refuses it. She is hung, suspended on nothing over the sea, sadistic triumph still racing through her at finally, _finally_ finding the fucking line to cross with holier-than-thou Gur Sevraq. For a perfect second she thinks she can keep herself floating above the waves with that feeling and that refusal alone. 

And then she plummets.

And this, too, she refuses.

So she pulls herself, aching, back up.

Things get a little strange after that.

Clem is fairly certain she has never felt this angry in her life. The only thing she thinks can come close is the ugly, bitter resentment that always results from a talk with her mother. Or, she thinks as she rips the plating off of their chest and slashes the circuitry exposed, maybe when that upstart Rooke flew her Panther better than she ever had. But still, it really didn’t compare to whatever this was. 

Clementine has always had big dreams. No one ever said as much to her, Crysanthe only once giving a sarcastic remark to that effect after she had declared she was forming a black ops team from Kesh prisoners. In fact, now that she thinks about it, Gur Sevraq is probably the only one who knows just how big her dreams truly are. 

Their limbs punch through her frightfully easily. Who knew a monk would weaponize his own body? She pays it back by tearing a limb off. 

The problem, she thinks, is that she never acted on it. Not in a way that mattered. For all of her desire, turning those dreams to reality required… _work._ She had seen an opportunity with kidnapping the head priest of the Resin Heart, yet it crumbled to pieces in her fingers before she even had a chance to use it. Another one presented itself when she was a ruler in Millenium Break, and for her efforts she was thrown into a jail cell twice, stripped of her name and lineage, and laughed out of the room by her idiot uncle. She made the first steps, but could never follow through on them in a way that ended with what she wanted.

Is that how it came to this? The lightning flashes again and Gur is round red eyes, skeletal sharp limbs, a monster from the stories the other noble brats tried to scare her with when they were children. That would make her the hero, she thinks, a bubble of satisfaction widening her smile. She’ll slay the beast in front of her, and anyone else who tries to stand in her way. Maybe that was the follow through she kept missing, after all. 

Gur slams into her, and they are in the air again, tumbling off the fort towards the cold, cold ocean below them. They hit a jutting piece of metal on the side of the fort, and Clementine feels her legs shatter as Gur’s lower body crumples with a wail of tearing metal. Her blood flies behind them, and when the lightning flashes it gleams like a trail of glittering rubies, like little red moons, and she thinks that if the people could see her like this she would go down in history. She would be made the highest power. All of Divinity would remember her, forever and ever and ever.

Then there is pain, and ice water, and nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> well, this is my first fic for the fandom!! odd considering ive listened to fatt for years now, but [shrugs] 
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
